Wilson's Disease
Kim and Logan

Introduction

Wilson's Disease is a hereditary disease that affects the liver. It causes the body to retain copper. The copper gets built up on the liver and eventually damages the liver. As a result, the liver releases the copper into the blood stream. This causes damage of your brain, kidneys, and eyes. Without treatment Wilson's Disease can cause severe brain damage, liver failure, and even death.
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Wilson's disease is hereditary

Symptoms

Even though the copper build up starts at birth, symptoms usually do not appear until later on in life.
The most distinctive symptom is the Kayser-Fleisher ring (a brown ring around the cornea of your eye.) Other symptoms include slurred speech, difficulty swallowing, drooling, tremors of arms, legs, etc., impared muscle tone, and abnormal posture.1/3 of patients
with Wilson's Disease have psychiatric issues.
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brown ring around eye






Structure of Wilson's Disease

In the body copper is used to transport electrons in important biological processes. For example, ATP uses copper to transport electrons. The Wilson's Disease is a protein and is put into the liver. The liver holds it in the cytoplasma and then transports it to the ceruloplasmin and excretion into bile. The Wilson's Disease's ATPases has a multi-topic which enables the Copper to bypass the Cell membrane. The Wilson's disease's ATPases are made up of a synthesized single-chain polypeptide. The cell membrane is made up of lipids which are non-polar heads which block anything that is not useful to the cell. But because the ATPases have amino acids with them, the amino acids are used so the copper can go directly into the cell.

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Video of Wilson Disease.







WORKS CITED


Information about Wilson's disease
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/wilsons/wilsons.htm
Structure of Wilson's disease
http://ajpgi.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/276/2/G311#B2